Provisional Programme

Below is the provisional programme for the Marginalised Mainstream Conference.

Please note that the schedule is subject to change.  The conference registration fee covers lunch on the first day and the reception following the second day.  If you wish to attend the lunchtime workshop with Kate Macdonald on the second day, please bring your own lunch.

The Marginalised Mainstream

Thursday 8 November

10 am

Introduction

Keynote Speaker: Professor Phillip Tew, Brunel University, London

11:30

Parallel Panels

Comic Internationalism

Ross Griffin, University College Cork

“The Exceptional Seven: America’s New Kind of Cold War in Avengers Assemble”

Sanyukta Poddar, University of Delhi

“Hindi Superhero Comics: Kitsch and the Dystopic Nation”

Sarah Harris, Bennington College, Vermont, USA

“Blood in the Gutter: Characteristics and Scholarship of Spanish Comics”

The Shameful Genre

Dr. Juliane Römhild, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia

“All’s not well that ends well”

Angela Chung-tak Tse, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

“Regency Feminine Ideals and Victorian Female Emancipation in Catherine Gore’s fashionable novels”

Dr. Kirsten H. F. Riley, University of Glasgow

“Rejecting Representation: High Art and the Problem with Photorealism”

The Man Booker Prize

Dr. Graham Matthews, Newcastle University

“Institution and Independence: James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late (1994)”

Dr. Lucy Gallagher, Newcastle University

“Romantic and Regressive: Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac (1984)”

Dr. Lewis Ward

“Speeches and Silence: J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999)”

1 pm

Lunch

2:00

Parallel Panels

The Refusal of Seriousness

Dr. Ann-Marie Einhaus, Northumbria University

“British comic fiction and the canon: The case of P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett”

Michael Shallcross, Durham University

“‘A Rude, Popular literature’: Parody and Populism in G.K. Chesterton’s Detective Fiction”

Dr. Kate Hext, University of Exeter

“The Life Delirious; Nothing Serious!’: Anti-Intellectualism in the Hollywood Musical”

Comic (R)evolution

Elizabeth Penner, De Montfort University

“On Becoming A Man: Illustrated Adventure Stories in the Boy’s Own Paper”

Emma Janette Gilbert, University of Leicester

“Masculinities and Concepts of Britishness in WE Johns’s Biggles novels”

Dr. Brandon Chitwood, Marquette University, Wisconsin, USA

“Two-Dimensional Man: Uncanny Valley Girls and Para-human Heroics in the Flatlands of the 1980’s”

Cult Status

Mark Sutton, University of Sydney

“’The World of Research Has Gone Berserk’: Studying Bob Dylan”

Dr. Song Shi, Minzu University Of China; Brunel University

“The Cultural Phenomenon of Kung Fu Films”

Dr. Adam Stock, Durham University

“’Totally devoid of ideas but reads smoothly’?: John Wyndham and the Age of Anxiety”

3:30

Tea Break

3:45

Parallel Panels

 

Hazards of Popularity

Dr. Smita Verghese, The English and Foreign Languages University, India

“Bestsellers—Not Good Enough for Classrooms?”

Erin Johnson, Mansfield College, Oxford

“Genre, Canonicity, and the Literary Young Adult Novel: The Case of Linda Newbery’s Set in Stone”
Emma Young, University of Salford

“Short, Sweet and Shunned? The Marginalisation of the Short Story in Britain”

Cultural Imagery

James Bernthal, University of Exeter

“Reading Agatha Christie, Cover to Cover”

Ritu Sen, University of Rajasthan, India

“Celebrating the ‘Great Indian Wedding’ on Celluloid”

Marta Werbanowska, University of Warsaw

“Visions (and sounds) of popular culture in Kevin Young’s To Repel Ghosts”

The Intertextual and the Metatextual

Marc McLaughlin, Oriel College, Oxford

    “Movie-Made Generation”: Cinesthetics and the Novel”

Miranda Corcoran, University College Cork

“Historiographic Heroism: History and Narrative in the Postmodern Comic Book”

Anna Blackwell, De Montfort University

“’Beneath his talents’: Critical reception, Thor, Kenneth Branagh and Adapting a ‘Shakespearean’ Identity”

5:15

Keynote Speaker: Professor James Chapman, University of Leicester

Friday 9 November

10am

Keynote Speaker:

Professor Christoph Lindner, University of Amsterdam

11:15

Parallel Panels

Innovation

Urvashi Vashist, University College London

“Fanatic Fiction”

Dr. Matt Heyler, University of Exeter

“Everyday Piracy: Aesthetics, Erotics, Economics, and Academics”

Jack Murray, University College Cork

“Communicative Intent: Authorial strategies in the work of Hideo Kojima”

Evelyn Baldwin, University of Arkansas, USA

“The MMORPG as Venue for Learning and Identity Development”

Circumlocution

Dr. Ingibjorg Agustsdottir, University of Iceland

“Female Empowerment and the Frailties of Queenship: Philippa Gregory and the Popular Historical Novel”

Simon Thomas, Magdalen College, Oxford

“‘My Vixen’ : the Many Metamorphoses of Lady Into Fox”

Jochem Riesthuis, Radboud University, Netherlands

“Red Scare: Left Wing Incursions into Crime Fiction”

Dr Lia Wen-Ching Liang, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

“Theatrical Mediation of Cultures and Politics in the Far East: the Manchuko in Careless Rapture”

Westerns

Jiri Salamoun, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

“Mixing the High and the Low in Ishmael Reed’s Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down”

Erik Grayson, Wartburg College, Iowa, USA

“‘Longing for the Cold War’: The Visual and Narrative Nostalgia of Retrofuturism in the Fallout Series,”

Leslie McMurtry, Swansea University

“Doctor Who, Radio Cowboy: The Radio Western Tradition Inherited by the Eighth Doctor in the BBC7/Big Finish Plays”

1pm

Lunch Break

Workshop: “Shame: what is it good for?” with Dr. Kate Macdonald, Ghent University

2pm

Parallel Panels

 

Mass Appeal

Diana Wallace, University of Glamorgan

“Neglecting the Neo-Tudor? Philippa Gregory and the mainstream historical novel”

Kate Jones, University of East Anglia

“Haunting the margins of the mainstream: A. L. Barker’s ghost stories”

Dr. Charlotte Bayer, University of Gloucestershire

“Resisting Marginalisation: Contemporary Women’s Spy Fiction”

Marginal appeal

Sarah Post, Lancaster University

“Failing the Authenticity Test: The Case of Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani”

Dr. Melle Starsen, Upper Iowa University

“Hidden messages: The archetypes of Blaxploitation films”

Jackie Yu-I Su, National Taiwan University

“Hip Hop Capitalism and the Production of Music: Signifyin’ Black Capitalism in Heru Ptah’s A Hip Hop Story”

Sex and Violence

Dr. Dan Hassler-Forest, University of Amsterdam

“No such thing as gratuitous’: Sex, Violence, and Cultural Capital on Premium Cable TV”

Dr. Paul Williams, University of Exeter

“Crumb, Spiegelman, J. B. Rund and the Making of Adult Comics”

Xavier Aldana Reyes, Lancaster University

“The New Avantpulp: Marketing Cult and the Failure of Extreme Corporeality”

3:30

Tea Break

3:45

Parallel Panels

Marginalised Women

Dr. Anthea Taylor, University of Queensland

“The Academic Marginalisation of the Feminist ‘Blockbuster’”

Amy Burns, Northumbria University

“The ‘Lit’ in Chick-Lit”

Sofia Hussain, Dr. Munazza Yaqoob, International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan

“Telling the Untold Tales of Women’s Heart: A Study of Fiction in English by Pakistani and Indian Women Authors”

Anti-Heroes

Michael Maupin, University of Zurich

“Mainstreaming the Marginal in Dexter, True Blood, and Grimm”

Dan Țăranu, Transilvania University, Romania

“The Marginal Man in Mainstream TV Shows”

Victoria Bates and Sam Goodman, University of Exeter

“Of Men & Monsters: Medical Villainy in Popular Fiction of the Long-Twentieth Century”

 

Unknown Elements

Dr. Nadia Atia, Queen Mary

“Murder in Mesopotamia: Agatha Christie in the Middle East”

Dr. George Simmers

    “P.G.Wodehouse and the Business of Writing”

Dr. Anna Caughey, Keble College, Oxford

“Text and Margin in Pratchett and Gaiman’s Good Omens”

5:15

Keynote Speaker: Professor Nicola Humble, University of Roehampton

6:15

Closing Reception